I’ve touched on almost every genre over my 1,200+ Songs of the Day but to this point I’ve never featured any opera. This week, no doubt to the consternation of many, I will remedy that.
I’m not an opera fan, by any means… the only complete opera I’ve ever sat through was a Broadway staging of La Boheme by Baz Luhrman. That was a beautiful piece of work, but you won’t catch me dropping the $20 to catch the next IMAX showing of Turandot at my local Muvico.
Because the Concert in Central Park was originally intended to be a Paul Simon solo gig, many of the featured songs are from Simon’s solo albums.
I imagine the setlist was changed a bit once Garfunkel’s participation was assured (‘Old Friends,’ for example, had to have been an addition meant for the duo) but many of the tracks would likely have been performed whether Garfunkel showed up or not. And that gives listeners the treat of hearing what Paul Simon’s solo records might have sounded like had he never split with Garfunkel.
In September of 1981, a planned Paul Simon solo concert turned into a generation-inspiring event when Simon invited Art Garfunkel to join him onstage in Central Park. Half a million people gathered on the Great Lawn to witness the historic reunion.
The resulting album is a lovely, touching document of the event and a hell of a batch of songs, too. It has a charmingly rough quality, including some flubbed verses and musical stumbles, which only serve to highlight the spontaneity of the show.
I have a pretty good working knowledge of all of Bruce Springsteen’s albums, even the ones I don’t own, but 1980’s The River has always been a mystery to me. And reading up on it for today’s blog entry, I’m fascinated by what I’m missing.
The River is a double album that continues the working-class blues theme of Springsteen’s earlier work but pairs it up lighter fare more in the pop vein. Musically, those styles are joined with more somber tracks that nod toward his next album, Nebraska.
Bruce Springsteen’s fourth album, 1978’s Darkness on the Edge of Town, was released three years after Born to Run, a period during which Springsteen was kept out of the studio due to a legal skirmish with his former manager.
Rather than capitalizing on his new-found fame by cutting a crowd-pleasing album, Springsteen decided to go darker (literally). Darkness on the Edge of Town follows the same sort of street smart characters as his early work but they are more often tragic than triumphant. These people might be born to run, but the circumstances of their lives have them cemented in place.
